Sanctification: The Spirit of Your Mind
By Larry White
10/19/2012
The latest hint from "science" about the brain is that the storage of memory seems to be holographic. That is, it cannot be isolated to a particular area of the organ. To the natural man, (which I will refer to as a mundane, whom the Bible describes with the word psychikos, soulish or sensual with no spirit involved in his thinking), memory seems to be stored everywhere. But that idea is due to the limitations of people who are mundane. A popular book now calls them Muggles. There is a modern scientific a priori, that there is no spirit or God and things "became" accidentally, (Psa. 14:1). Therefore the task of locating the origin of consciousness is beyond the capabilities of the mundane. When faced with the obvious fact of the existence of spirit, they avoid it even then, and call it "non-local", or "other dimensional", (meaning that it is in Neverland, but in their minds, still materialistic or corporeal.) A mundane person cannot "grok" spirit. Even some religions like the carnal Mormons believe that spirit is a tangible substance with corporeal weight.
I think instinct is what all biological organisms have, including man (that is easily overruled by him), and is based in the same natural life that all beings have from God. We call it the Soul. Yes, the psyche again. Man is a three tiered being with Body (soma), Soul (psyche) and Spirit (pneuma). You could look at the Soul as the animal life, and thus represented before the throne of God as the "Living Creatures", with a face of a Lion, a Calf, a Man, and an Eagle (Rev. 4). New Age hippies call it Gaia. The East Orient calls it Chi [Qi]. It is God's means of making things alive. The earth is totally saturated with the psyche of life. From the deepest abyss to the highest peak, you will find life.Now then we, who are spirits like God is, have been incarnated into this living earthly creature called man and we experience ourselves as humans. Consequently, we have human propensities -- thirst, hunger, security, procreation, and when not overruled by our spirit, greed, hatred, idolatry, power, murder, and lusts of all kinds, which I suppose you could call instinctual, especially procreation. All this is grouped under the heading of "The Flesh", meaning Human and every desire that goes with it.
Remember the old Star Trek episode where spirit aliens had to take human form to interact with the crew and had all kinds of problems with their human impulses? Kirk took the female leader and seduced her, Spock took the male leader and provoked him to anger and jealousy. Scottie took another alien and got him drunk. Another film illustration is the Shaggy Dog movie where the boy, having stayed too long in the Dog form starts having canine impulses and canine desires and starts lusting after actual dogs. He had to remind himself of who he was. Now apply this to your human form. These both illustrate the difference of nature between flesh and spirit. The world wants you to be fully and totally human. If you aren't, then you are not one of them -- you don't belong, and they will hate you. Jesus kept saying, "I am not of this world." Christianity wants you to be fully conscious in your spirit and overrule the flesh, partaking of the divine nature while in this fleshly vessel. Thus the three tiers is a simplistic view of man, but a good working model.
We have an earthly life to live and God has supplied a perfect (though limited) vessel to inhabit and a brain that is suitable for a spirit to use while here. That is why the brain can be damaged and the spirit will lose the usage of that portion of the organ. Memory is not really gone, the spirit simply does not have the usage any longer of that portion of the flesh to access it. Like Cat Stevens said in song, "And if I ever lose my mouth and all my teeth, North and South, And if I ever lose my mouth -- I won't have to talk...." (understood... "no more").
I think the recent fashion of thinking that we are all connected somehow in the spirit, to the point of being one entity and therefore God, is a mistake of perception. One of the attributes of spirit is that it is, like we say, incorporeal or as was said, non-local. The Bible uses the phrase "in spirit", or "in the spirit". You could say that that is the realm of non-locality. I think when people get a glimpse of that they mistake nature, or attribute for identity. We are everywhere, but we are not everyone. A drop of water is not the entire ocean even though they are hard to distinguish when together. The essence of the creation of God, is not in anything you see (which is the machine full of attributes) but rather the most important aspect of creation, the point of the whole "experiment" is identity. God has created individuals with volition and accountability. He has created, however minutely, an "other", reflecting his own being's image, who can look back at him and appreciate the wonder of being. But from his perspective, it's the wonder of the birth of children. He is bringing many sons unto glory. (Heb. 2:10)With this knowledge there must be added the wisdom that, "Yes, all of this is well and good, but we are still the created, not the creator." Wisdom will have some respect for the creator; wisdom will humbly revere and stand in awe. Also a humble wisdom will recognize that God is not "source"; he is not "higher power". God is our Father, (identity not attribute) who loves us.
LW